Minions

Friday evening, we took our nephews to see Despicable Me 2, an absolutely delightful movie, perhaps even more charming than the original. Gru and his three girls, Margo, Edith, and adorable Agnes, are back as fun as ever, fighting villains and falling in love. Yet, it's those silly little minions that steal the show. As a linguist, the "minionese" language fascinated me throughout the film. I distinctly heard words and phrases in French (zut alors, ooh là là, c'est tout, poulet tiki masala), Spanish (te amo, para tú, la boda), Italian (gelato, bello), English (potato, banana, idiot, OK), and Japanese (kampai) among the gibberish. A bit of research revealed that, along with Sandra Bullock and Jon Hamm, some of the minions are voiced by the film's French producers, Chris Renaud and Pierre Coffin, who created the language. Despite my hope for a pattern or language lesson, it seems that minionese is a combination of modern world languages and gibberish whose primary objective is to sound funny; meaning is secondary. En tout cas, I think that the minions are absolutely hilarious and that the film is fun for the whole family.  I'm so happy that Alec and Chase invited Uncle Eric and me to go to the movie with them :)